The White Lotus removed ‘non-binary, maybe trans’ character after Trump re-election
"You see Laurie struggling to explain it to her friends, struggling to use they/them pronouns" says Carrie Coon of her character, who originally had a queer child
The White Lotus dropped a “non-binary, maybe trans” character from the current season of the show, according to one of its stars, Carrie Coon.
The actress, who plays lawyer Laurie Duffy in the show, made the revelation in a new interview with Harper’s Bazaar.
Laurie’s storyline involves her struggling to connect with two of her old girlfriends while holidaying in Thailand because of fundamental differences between them, including on money and politics.
“You see Laurie struggling to explain it to her friends” – Carrie Coon
Asked if her character’s backstory was kept purposefully vague, Coon said: “There was a bit more context to her home life. You originally found out that her daughter was actually non-binary, maybe trans, and going by they/them. You see Laurie struggling to explain it to her friends, struggling to use they/them pronouns, struggling with the language, which was all interesting.”
“It was only a short scene,” Coon continued. “But for me, it did make the question [in episode three] of whether Kate voted for Trump so much more provocative and personally offensive to Laurie, considering who her child is in the world. But the season was written before the election.”
Elsewhere in the interview, Coon praised The White Lotus creator Mike White, saying he “doesn’t shy away from challenging cultural conversations.”
She also said: “Considering the way the Trump administration has weaponized the cultural war against transgender people even more since then, when the time came to cut the episode down, Mike felt that the scene was so small and the topic so big that it wasn’t the right way to engage in that conversation.”
Season three of The White Lotus has previously made headlines for a storyline involving on-screen brothers Patrick Schwarzenegger and Sam Nivola, who were involved in a sexual act in the last episode of the hit HBO show.